Dragonflies

It was the first time I did a heroic dose of mushrooms. I was with a good friend, summer night, five grams a person. After ingesting in another friend's house, we walked to the house of my co-psychonaut. By the time we got there, I was hallucinating wildly: I was seeing threads of "light" emerging from the ground and spreading like flowers in a bouquet, attaching themselves on nearby trees and buildings. Five or six threads went out of some point of origin. Everything seemed to be in rainbow palettes, which color-cycled incessantly.

First really strange thing happened when we met friend's dog. Upon seeing us, it moved backwards in panic, never losing us from sight. I've never seen a dog so scared. I'm becoming more and more convinced that animals see something what we humans can't. Has anybody experienced similar things with animals while tripping?

When we came into the apartment, we began conversing. It was Tuesday, and there was a concert of Michael Jackson scheduled for Friday. For a short while we made fun about it, then I perceived that we were actually communicating about other things too, but not only by means of speech. No matter how I tried to control the flow of conversation, I couldn't be sure which stories were told and which were transmitted "other way". Soon I began to feel that I "came home". Out of this came a feeling that there was something "modern" about the present time. I realized that there is an infinite multitude of possible lives in posible times, and I could access every one of them. They had different "tastes", but the present, in which I ocassionally returned, was tasting the best.

3 hours into the trip - I kept checking the watch - I got paranoic about my physical fitness, feeling physically unfit to meet the conditions of what I felt was coming on. I had to breathe some fresh air so I went on the balcony, collapsing on the floor and falling into a coma or a very deep trance which was extremely unpleasant. I knew nothing; only that there was this creature, which I could see only partially. It had a tail like a serpent, but I knew it was an insect. It wouldn't let me go; "me" being my rational mind. When I woke up, I couldn't recognize the surroundings. This state lasted for half an hour, then it was gone. After sleeping for two hours, I felt reborn.

Later I recollected that in fact I was this insect creature which I instinctively recognised as a dragonfly, and that I dreamed its dreams. It was last thing I remember before waking up and seeing another sober friend, staring at me in suspended panic - flying through a magenta web, which seemed made of branches or some kind of tissue. "Not this," I kept on murmuring upon waking, "I wasn't ready for this. Only this - no." And later: "Nobody can ever be prepared for this."

Three days later I was going to go to an island in Adriatic. While still in town, I decided I'd take two mushrooms with me, rationalising that after a car accident one has soon too get into a car and begin driving not to get overcome by fear. It was the first time since the trip that I had them in my pocket. I stopped in the supermarket, having to buy a sea towel. The lady which was served before of me requested a sheet of textile patterned with dragonflies. Could it be coincidence or a visit from "there"? Whatever it was, it didn't persist, nor returned in subsequent voyages. There was a bad one involving computer graphics, which I will post later.